Steve Schimmrich is a geologist and community college professor in a rural area of the mid-Hudson Valley of New York. All of the opinions expressed here are strictly his own. Sometimes he gets cranky and uses bad words.

Monday, December 13, 2010

Phil Plait over at Bad Astronomy brought this to my attention and I can't resist sharing it here. Photographer Olivier Grunewald took stunning images of sulfur miners working in truly hellish conditions in the crater of Kawah Ijen volcano in Java, Indonesia.

Next to a sulfuric acid lake (pH measured at 0.5!) in the caldera are a number of vents emitting volcanic gasses like sulfur dioxide (SO2) and hydrogen sulfide (H2S). These gasses are channeled through ceramic pipes which results in the condensation of liquid sulfur as the gas cools. Deep red molten sulfur pours out of the pipes, cools to the yellow mineral and is then carried out of the area by miners in baskets. The miners work without protective equipment, obviously suffer respiratory problems, and have to hike up and down out of the volcanoes caldera twice a day. Typical miners earn the equivalent of $13 U.S. per day.

1 comment:

I feel like the miners should be paid much more for bringing in that sulfur everyday. What intrigues me the most is the manufacturing of Sulfuric acid by contact. I've been learning as much as I can about the element. I saw a place that has slogans for sulfur, I can share the post here: Sulfur Slogans